We don't think about it but we should be grateful everyday
to the Scott Brothers of Watertown, Massachusetts, who invented the toilet
paper in the 19th century!
Since people were embarrassed to buy it, the Scott Brothers
thought they had a dud invention on their hands until they had the brilliant
idea to give it freely to hotels. Hotels agreed because they were fed up with
their small pipes being clogged all the time. Until then, people used corn
husks and newspapers which clogged the small sewer pipes. Customers loved the
toilet paper for that very reason too and began buying it. And the rest is
history.
A more modern outhouse in Romania
Photo: Ziarul Prejmereanul
In Romania's outhouses, we used corn husks and communist
party propaganda newspapers because we did not have Sears and Roebucks catalogs
or any catalogs for that matter. Once in a while a German tourist would leave
behind one of their catalogs and we enjoyed looking at the abundance of
everything we did not have, so we never used those for toilet paper. We
especially enjoyed wiping with pages which had the dictator Ceausescu's face on
them.
Communist Romania toilet paper I brought back from my 1985 visit
Later on, when toilet paper was finally made, it was coarse
light brown paper with wood chips still embedded in the paper, or, if white, it
had faintly visible words on it from the books which were recycled into toilet
paper, including American Bibles donated during disaster reliefs. I still have
a strip of more modern pink toilet paper, less coarse but wood chips are still
visible in the paper. This strip dates from four years ago. Progress after
communism is very slow.
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